Beat Steelers or bust? Same story to end season for Browns

Within the last 25 years, the Browns have closed seasons against Pittsburgh 10 times. Their record is 0-10. Can it be any different Sunday at Heinz Field?

Steve Doerschuk CantonRep.com sports writer @sdoerschukREP

Ask around among Browns fans and the preference mostly comes back the same:

Beat Pittsburgh on Sunday. Worry about draft position later.

What's the point of a win at this point? Easy. It's Pittsburgh.

Winning the last game of a lost season wouldn't mean as much against any other team.

For example, defeating Jacksonville to close out 2009 was as much fun as buckling into a roller-coaster car in a winter storage shed. The 2010 team was so energized it lost its first three games.

Whipping the archrival Sunday would carry at least a hint of a wild dash through the snow.

Would it be a sensation so bracing it would carry all the way to summer camp? Who could say?

Within the last 25 years, the Browns have closed seasons against Pittsburgh 10 times. Their record is 0-10.

Michael Lombardi could say, maybe.

The team's 54-year-old general manager was a first-year Browns scout the last time the team closed a season by beating Pittsburgh. The year was 1987.

Back then, it wasn't over in the regular season. The '87 team used a regular season-ending win over Pittsburgh as momentum toward winning a playoff game against the Colts, prior to losing a thriller a Denver in the AFC finals.

Since then, there has been no momentum to be had from a closing win over Pittsburgh, there being no such wins.

Bill Belichick's laborious first year as head coach ended with a 17-10 loss in Three Rivers Stadium. At least it made someone happy, namely, Chuck Noll, who was in his final game as Pittsburgh's head coach.

Belichick's second year ended as had his first, with a three-game losing streak capped by a loss at Pittsburgh. By the end of Belichick's third year, which ended on a 1-3 skid and another loss at Pittsburgh, he was not well liked.

Poor Belichick. He couldn't win for losing back then. His fourth year produced an 11-5 record and a trip to the playoffs. Alas, he was knocked out at Pittsburgh, giving him an ignominious fourth straight season-ending loss at the confluence of the Monongahela, the Ohio and the Allegheny.

So it went from 1991-94; 1995 didn't end at Pittsburgh, but it ended with the Browns moving to Baltimore.

They took three years off. The expansion Browns didn't play a finishing game at Pittsburgh until 2001. This time, it was Butch Davis' turn to end his first year as head coach with a loss to the Steelers, who were in a new stadium after Three Rivers met up with a load of dynamite.

Call it the curse of Belichick. The next year, Davis steered the Browns into the playoffs — and a game at Heinz Field.

The Browns led 24-7 in the third quarter. They still had a lead late in the fourth quarter when Dennis Northcutt dropped a pass that would have doomed Pittsburgh. Instead, the Steelers got the ball back on a punt, drove, and went up on a Chris Fuamatu-Ma'afala touchdown with 54 seconds left. The final was 36-33.

"This is going to hurt," Northcutt said at the time. "It's going to be very hard to move on."

Little did he know. Browns fans still are waiting for their next playoff game.

There have been season-ending losses to Pittsburgh since then, in 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

It's a tradition that makes Browns fans ill.

Pittsburgh will be the final opponent for the fifth time in six years. The franchises began duking it out in 1950 and never played a closer against each other until 1982.

Sunday represents Rob Chudzinski's first game in the home of the archrival. Draft position is not in his thoughts.

"Our focus is squarely on the Pittsburgh Steelers and finishing the season the season the right way," he said. "It's something we really want to do."

The last Browns head coach to win the first time he went to Pittsburgh was Chris Palmer in 1999. Phil Dawson kicked a field goal into a stiff wind as time expired to make it a 16-15 final.

Palmer was fired at the end of the following season.

Bud Carson's debut as Browns head coach came in the 1989 season opener, at Pittsburgh. The Browns won 51-0.

The residual benefits didn't last. Carson was fired with seven games remaining in the 1990 season.

Sister Publications

Original content available for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license, except where noted.
Times Reporter ~ 629 Wabash Ave. NW New Philadelphia, OH 44663 ~ Privacy Policy ~ Terms Of Service